DEADPOOL vs. X-FORCE Go Back to the 90s For Their First 'Extreme' Face-Off

By Chris Arrant, Editor April 28, 2014 01:45pm ET

Credit: Marvel Comics

They’ve taken separate paths, but the origin story of X-Force and Deadpool are forever intertwined in the 1990s in the final issues of New Mutants – and now that time is back.

Announced at Sunday’s “Wolverine: 3 Months To Die” panel at Chicago’s C2E2, the upcoming four-part series Deadpool Vs. X-Force will revisit the heady days of 1990s and show the never before seen first meeting between Cable’s rag-tag team of mutants and the merc with a mouth, Deadpool. In comics their first meeting was in the epic New Mutants #98 by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza, but in this new story by Duane Swierczynski and Pepe Larraz we’re learn the whole story. Two words: time travel. Stab his eyes and prepare for one of Cable’s timeslides, as we’re going back to 1991!

Credit: Marvel Comics

Newsarama: Duane, Deadpool has faced off against X-Force before - what's this story about that makes it special?

Duane Swierczynski: You never forget your first time! Although in this case.. they sort of do. Unknown to all parties involved, Deadpool met Cable and the rest of X-Force before the events of New Mutants #98. But their battle was shocking and disturbing, every single fragment had to be scrubbed from their collective memory banks. Finally, the truth can be told... in four action-packed comic books.

Credit: Marvel Comics

Nrama: So is this the classic proto- X-Force line-up seen in the waning days of New Mutants - can you talk about the team and its members here?

Swierczynski: Yep, it's the classic lineup - Cable has tapped Warpath, Boom-Boom, Cannonball and Domino to tackle this new threat. What's weird is, I've actually written about most of these guys before, in different series. But never as a team, and never in a situation like this.

Nrama: How does this fit in with comics that have come before, namely New Mutants #98?

Swierczynski: Well, it fits in just beforeNew Mutants #98. To say more risks a visit to Spoilerville. But the trouble starts with Cable senses a huge disturbance in the timespread, as if it's on the verge of collapse. He plays detective, of sorts, and traces it back to the only man alive with the technology to cause such a disruption - a man grieving over the loss of his grandson. And it turns out that this same man hired a certain mercenary (cough cough Deadpool) for a personal mission that has the potential to totally rewrite American history. If there's even an America left, after the dust settles.

Nrama: New Mutants #98 took place in the early 1990s – will this be as well, or perhaps somewhere else given the time travel discussed here?

Credit: Marvel Comics

Swierczynski: It's a lot of period pieces - 90s, 70s, 60s, 30s. Of course, for those last three, I mean the 1770s, the 1860s and the 1930s. My one small regret with my run on Cable was that the story never went backwards in time - the nature of the story demanded that Cable and (then- baby) Hope keep charging forward, forward, forward. So it's been fun to play around with real history a bit, especially with characters as volatile as Deadpool and Cable.

Nrama: Before we let you go, can you tease us with a surprise people can look forward to in issue 1?

Swierczynski: I hate giving away surprises! But I will say that, after 20 plus years of being a professional writer, I was finally able to use a line I've been saving since high school: